Fair Return Research Articles

ISO certifications and firms performance: Evidence from Oman

This study investigates the impact of ISO certifications on the Omani industrial and services companies listed on Mascut Securities Market. The firm performance measured by financial performance and market performance. The first one is measured by return on assets, return on equity and net operating profit while the market performance is measured by market fair value of shares. ISO certifications were surveyed if the company does or doesn’t have the certificate. ISO certification effect on performance was investigated in 80 Omani firms from both industrial (60%) and services (40%) sectors. In the industrial sector, MANOVA test showed that the ISO has a significant effect only on NOP. In the services sector, MANOVA test showed that the ISO has a significant effect on market fair value and return on assets.

: (Universities' Switch from Conservative Human Capital Establishment Centers to Anti-Capitalist Ideology Strongholds)

Russian Abstract: Проверено несколько гипотез, объясняющих нарастание враждебности среди профессуры и студентов в отношении частной собственности и иных институтов дружественных рынку при том, что еще восемьдесят лет назад лучшие университеты были оплотами консерватизма, каковой вполне гармонировал с тем высоким уровнем человеческого капитала которым владел выпускник известного университета. Так в Гарварде Ф-Д. Рузвельта воспринимали в 1930-е как опасного (левого) радикала и обвиняли в предательстве своего превосходного образования. Основными причинами изменения ситуации стали, по всей видимости, различные направления финансирования высшей школы – от обучения до невоенных НИОКР. Свою роль могла сыграть и растущая административно-контрольная зависимость университетов от правительственных чиновников. Последняя в частности связана с борьбой против дискриминации.English Abstract: In this paper we tested several hypotheses explaining the growth of hostility among professors and students to private property and market friendly institutions. It should be stressed, that eighty years ago the best universities were conservatives' strongholds. The latter looks pretty natural: people heavily invested in their own or their children education (Human Capital) looked forward to work hard and to earn fair return on their investments. F-D. Roosevelt was treated as dangerous radical and blamed as a traitor to his fine education. We found some evidences to explain the puzzle. Government imposed heavy pressure on private university educational institution. On one hand, state (government run) universities got more and more funding, on other hand Sputnik hysteria legitimized skyrocketed expenditure on Science, disproportionally disbursed among the best Universities of USA. Military spending on science could be treated as more or less ideologically neutral. Nonmilitary spending had being rising much faster than military ones for observed period since late 1950-ties, provided short and efficient way to reach Universities to promote Big Government radical agenda. Antidiscrimination campaign provided more power for governmental bodies to intervene in intra-university life.

Probabilistic Evaluation of Global Technically Recoverable Tight Gas Resources

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 165704, ’Probabilistic Evaluation of Global Technically Recoverable Tight Gas Resources,’ by Zhenzhen Dong, SPE, Schlumberger, and Stephen A. Holditch, SPE, and Walter B. Ayers, SPE, Texas A&M University, prepared for the 2013 SPE Eastern Regional Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, 20-22 August. The paper has not been peer reviewed. There are no reliable estimates of technically recoverable resources (TRRs) for unconventional reservoirs outside North America, and many countries lack the advanced technology such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing necessary to develop unconventional resources. To encourage investment in these technologies, new resources estimates are needed. The objective of this study was to develop a methodology and software for probabilistic resource estimation and to use this new technology to estimate global technically recoverable gas resources in tight sands. Introduction In this paper, tight gas is gas that is present in low-permeability sandstone or limestone formations. In the US, tight gas reservoirs are generally defined as having less than 0.1-md permeability. To produce gas at economic rates from reservoir rocks with such low permeability, massive hydraulic fracturing is necessary. Petroleum Resources Management System (PRMS). The terms “resources” and “reserves” have been and continue to be used to represent various categories of mineral or hydrocarbon deposits. In March 2007, SPE, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the World Petroleum Council, and the Society of Petroleum Evaluation Engineers jointly published the PRMS to provide an international standard for classification of oil and gas reserves and resources. It is important to remember that the broadest categories are also the least precise. As one moves toward the categories at the bottom of the PRMS, the associated estimates of the amount of natural gas in those categories become more and more uncertain. However, technically and economically recoverable resources are not formally classified in the system. The Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Classification System. According to the EIA, TRRs are the subset of the total resource base that is recoverable with existing technology. The term “resources” represents the total quantity of hydrocarbons that is estimated, at a particular time, to be contained in (1) known accumulations and (2) accumulations that have yet to be discovered (prospective resources). Economically recoverable resources are those resources for which there are economic incentives for production. It is important to note that economically unrecoverable resources may, at some time in the future, become recoverable as soon as the technology to produce them becomes less expensive or when the characteristics of the market are such that companies can ensure a fair return on their investment by extracting the resources. The authors of the original paper considered TRRs to be the resources that can be produced within a 25-year time period. The authors rearranged categories of the PRMS, and presented an overview of how the estimates of technically and economically recoverable resources are broken down. Those commercial resources, including cumulative production and reserves, are economically recoverable resources. TRRs are the subset of the total resource base that includes commercial resources, contingent resources, and prospective resources. Estimated ultimate recovery is not a resources category but a term that refers to the quantities of petroleum that are estimated to be potentially recoverable from an accumulation, including those quantities that have already been produced.

An emerging hybrid mechanism for information disclosure forecasting

Corporate governance mechanisms ensure that investors get a fair return on their investment. A well-established governance mechanism reduces the information asymmetry and agency cost between a firm’s management and stakeholders, but decision makers find it difficult to assess the corporate governance status of publicly-listed firms before the annual official announcement the following year. This study proposes a hybrid ensemble learning forecasting mechanism (HELM), whose single-component candidates from the extreme learning machine (ELM) algorithm with dissimilar ensemble strategies (that is, data diversity, parameter diversity, kernel diversity, and pre-processing diversity) form one initial dataset. We implement locally linear embedding into the proposed mechanism to handle the dimensionality task and then utilize the weighted voting taken from the base components’ cross-validation performance on a training dataset as the integration mechanism. Experimental results show that the proposed HELM significantly outperforms the other classifiers, but its superior performance under many real-life application domains comes with a critical drawback: it is incapable of providing an explanation for the underlying reasoning mechanisms. Thus, this study advances the utilized rough set theory with its explanation capability to extract the inherent knowledge from the ensemble mechanism (HELM). The informative rules can be used as a guideline for decision makers to make a reliable judgment under turbulent financial markets.

On the role of clouds in the fair weather part of the global electric circuit

Abstract. Clouds in the fair weather return path of the global electric circuit (GEC) reduce conductivity because of the limited mobility of charge due to attachment to cloud water droplets, effectively leading to a loss of ions. A high-resolution GEC model, which numerically solves the current continuity equation in combination with Ohm's law, is used to show that return currents partially flow around clouds, with current divergence above the cloud and convergence below the cloud. An analysis of this effect is presented for various types of clouds, i.e., for different altitude extents and for different horizontal dimensions, finding that the effect is most pronounced for high clouds with a diameter below 100 km. Based on these results, a method to calculate column and global resistance is developed that can account for all cloud sizes and altitudes. The CESM1(WACCM) (Community Earth System Model – Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model) as well as ISCCP (International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project) cloud data are used to calculate the effect of this phenomenon on global resistance. From CESM1(WACCM), it is found that when including clouds in the estimate of resistance the global resistance increases by up to 73%, depending on the parameters used. Using ISCCP cloud cover leads to an even larger increase, which is likely to be overestimated because of time averaging of cloud cover. Neglecting current divergence/convergence around small clouds overestimates global resistance by up to 20% whereas the method introduced by previous studies underestimates global resistance by up to 40%. For global GEC models, a~conductivity parameterization is developed to account for the current divergence/convergence phenomenon around clouds. Conductivity simulations from CESM1(WACCM) using this parameterization are presented.

Values-Based Supply Chains

Values-based supply chains (VBSCs) have emerged as a structure to enhance the viability of mid-scale farms while preserving jobs and rural economies. They involve partnerships between producers, processors, distributors, retailers, and food service operators who share environmental, economic, and/or social values. We developed case studies and interviewed key informants to analyze the impacts of access to capital, regulations, infrastructure, and business acumen on the success of VBSCs. Communicating the benefits of VBSCs’ products to customers, as well as to the VBSC partners, was instrumental to the success of the VBSCs in our case studies. However, our key informants emphasized that additional communications are needed to develop markets for VBSCs’ products. Scale-appropriate infrastructure is also required, but funders are not convinced that these investments are secure. Successful VBSCs operate with economies of scale to broaden demand for their products while also generating fair returns to producers and other supply chain partners.

Assessment of the gender gap in Sudan

This paper examines the gender gap in education and investigates the related implications on the labour market and returns to education in Sudan. Our results confirm two stylized facts: first, the incidence of significant gender gap in education in Sudan and second, the incidence of gender inequalities and gap in skill level, share of women in economic activities, labour force participation rate, employment and returns to education can be interpreted in relation to the incidence of gender gap in education. We fill the gap in the Sudanese literature by addressing the gender gap in education and related implications in labour market and returns to education, since these issues are not adequately discussed in the Sudanese literature. A novel element in our analysis is that we use new primary survey data at the micro level to show the gap and differences in returns to education and correlation between wage and education, experience and its square defined by gender in Sudan. Our findings at the micro level imply that the slight gender gap or difference in the rate of return to education in favour of women is only 0.2 which is not very noticeable. These findings indicate the importance of enhancing educational attainment for women to facilitate improvement of return to education for women. We find that in general women are likely to be more unemployed than men. The major policy implications and recommendations from our analysis are that Sudan needs to reduce the gender gap in education and related implication in the labour market. By investing large amounts of resources in increasing women's educational attainment, improving economic participation, increasing employment opportunities and improving equal and fair returns to education for Sudanese women to better integrate Sudanese women into the economy to reap the benefits of investment in empowerment of women.

Empirical analysis of competing factors influencing exploration investment in international oil and gas industry: evidence from OPEC countries

This study examines the influence of competing economic, uncertainty, and geological factors in driving the exploration investment of organization of petroleum exporting countries (OPEC) countries. We specify and estimate a fixed-effects model with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors on data for 1980–2011. Our findings show a significant positive influence of oil prices, production, reserves replacement, and the geological potential of petroleum basins. The results also reveal a significant negative influence of resource depletion on exploration expenditure. In terms of impact, the estimated results show a significant elastic response of exploration investment to changes in oil prices and production, suggesting the dominating influence of economic factors on exploration investment behavior. From policy perspectives, the estimated results suggest the desirability of OPEC's market development policies to favour high oil prices to ensure fair returns on exploration investments and justify incremental investments. Similarly, production control policies have the potential to impede exploration investment.

A Fair Return for Skillful Financial Analysis and Trading

A Fair Return for Skillful Financial Analysis and Trading

Investment performance of hedge funds

Abstract Economic function of hedge funds is exactly the same as the one performed by investment funds. In both cases managers are in charge of investors’ money. Investors hope that if they withdraw their money, they will recover their contribution and fair return. The first section of the article presents the essence of hedge funds. The second section discusses measures for assessing the effects of investment policy pursued by hedge funds. The third section analyses the investment performance of hedge funds compared to S&P 500 index. The results of the analysis enabled the author to state that hedge funds achieve considerably higher rates of return regardless of market situation.

Marketing “Value” to Price-Sensitive Customers during the Tendering Process

Given the importance of tendering for procurement in B2B markets in India, this paper explores how value may be showcased in tendering situations. It analyses the various perceptions surrounding the tendering process and recommends possible mechanisms to capture customer value from two perspectives — marketing techniques to be employed by suppliers to ensure commensurate and fair return for value delivered and potential design changes in the price-discovery mechanism in tendering. This paper discusses the tendering process from structural, supplier, and buyer perspectives. It explores mechanisms through which superior value delivered by the supplier firm can be captured in the tendering process. For this, 26 supplier and customer firm managers from 10 government and private organizations were interviewed to understand the current practices for value capture in tendering. Several case studies drawn from these discussions are presented to illustrate the ideas developed in the paper. The study finds that suppliers can extract returns for the value of their offerings in a tendering situation by early engagement with buyers before the specifications are frozen by leveraging relationships with the buyer organization and at pre-bid meetings, and by exploiting opportunities provided through technical loading after the specifications are decided. Additionally, it is suggested that the buyer organization should leverage the opportunities inherently available to further improve price-discovery via structural changes to the tendering process by using a tiered adjusted-price bid mechanism. The alternate pricing method discussed in the paper could be used to aid the decisionmaking process in tendering and enable a robust value capturing mechanism.

International benchmarking of electricity transmission by regulators: A contrast between theory and practice?

Benchmarking of electricity networks has a key role in sharing the benefits of efficiency improvements with consumers and ensuring regulated companies earn a fair return on their investments. This paper analyses and contrasts the theory and practice of international benchmarking of electricity transmission by regulators. We examine the literature relevant to electricity transmission benchmarking and discuss the results of a survey of 25 national electricity regulators. While new panel data techniques aimed at dealing with unobserved heterogeneity and the validity of the comparator group look intellectually promising, our survey suggests that they are in their infancy for regulatory purposes. In electricity transmission, relative to electricity distribution, choosing variables is particularly difficult, because of the large number of potential variables to choose from. Failure to apply benchmarking appropriately may negatively affect investors’ willingness to invest in the future. While few of our surveyed regulators acknowledge that regulatory risk is currently an issue in transmission benchmarking, many more concede it might be. In the meantime new regulatory approaches – such as those based on tendering, negotiated settlements, a wider range of outputs or longer term grid planning – are emerging and will necessarily involve a reduced role for benchmarking.

Putting the Market Back in Dairy Marketing

Canada’s system of dairy supply-management restricts the availability of milk to Canadian households, food processors and restaurants to maintain a higher price for milk and dairy products than Canadians would otherwise pay. The immediate beneficiaries of the system are Canadian dairy farmers who own production quotas, without which any significant milk production is virtually forbidden.The system is enabled at the federal level in several important ways. These include an often-discussed import tariff which effectively closes the door – beyond certain minimum access commitments made to our trade partners – to imported dairy products. Less well-known to Canadians are the Agricultural Products Marketing Act, which effectively delegates federal power over interprovincial trade and exports to the provinces, and the Canadian Dairy Commission (CDC), a federal Crown corporation. The CDC is the lynchpin of the system – helping the provinces coordinate and allocate production limits and set minimum support prices.This paper asks whether the restrictions on milk production that are necessary to enforce prices correspond to the objectives of the CDC as set out in the legislation that created it, the Dairy Commission Act. These objectives are to provide producers of milk and cream with the opportunity of obtaining a fair return for their labor and investment and to provide consumers of dairy products with a continuous and supply of dairy products of high quality.We argue that the current degree of restriction on Canadian milk supply is not necessary to meet these objectives. It is possible to provide consumers a more adequate supply of milk and dairy products without sacrificing the goal of providing farmers with the opportunity to earn a fair return. A sharper focus on efficiency would also benefit the industry, where many are beset by debts and high quota values reduce industry dynamism by making entry difficult.The paper recommends changes to the governance of the CDC that would bring consumer and industrial users’ interests into decision-making, consistent with the regulatory set-up in many other industries. The paper further recommends a cap on support prices set by the CDC, until a reasonable benchmark is reached for an efficient farm, using national and international comparisons. Finally, to help Canadian farms achieve such a level of efficiency the paper recommends that the federal government reclaim for itself the powers over export and interprovincial trade that it delegated to the provinces so that it can enable farmers – who wish to operate outside of the quota system – to export outside of Canada and expand interprovincial trade.

Open Access improves returns to public research funding: A perspective from Germany

Open Access has become a major mechanism whereby the returns to public investment in research are maximized. Initially, the information technology revolution resulted in new dysfunctions and inequalities of scholarly communication, such as large price differences among publishers and journals; widespread usage limitations and re-use restrictions based on copyright; or systemic manipulation based on unmerited co-authorship, undue delays in peer review, and even outright fraud. Open Access mitigates or resolves these dysfunction and inequalities because a it provides fair returns to all stakeholders; b offers unlimited access and efficient usage; c enhances quality safeguards i.e. transparent processes including easier detection of plagiarism and fraud; and d enables free sharing and re-use e.g. CC-BY license.

A Study on HRM Practices in Public Sector Banks in Krishnagiri District

This article enlightened the banking activity which thrives on the strength of people power. People are the direct factors of productivity of its services and people are its sole consumers. Banking was a thriving industry in ancient India. Initially, the industrial houses pioneered banks with a view to generating funds for productive activities and at the same time offered considerable security, liquidity and fair returns to the depositors. In a way, banking continued to be a traditional industry till 1969. When major banks were taken over by the Government of India. With nationalization, banks ceased to be funding agencies only for industrial sector and became a vivacious instrument of social change more statistical data are available in support of the preposition that there is a phenomenal growth of banking industry. I. Introduction Banking industry viewed from personnel angle has its peculiarities. It is a labour intensive industry and efficiency of employees has got a bearing on the quality of services offered. This being the case, it should have been natural that professionalization of personnel management should have gained better priority but unfortunately personnel management should have gained better priority but unfortunately personnel happened to be the most neglected aspect of banks management. The typical working of banks as such does not require any professional training not require any professional training and here is an industry where it is strongly believed that every one can do anything and as one knows no body does much to the prosperity of the organization. This aspect is further accentuated by the fact that banks operate in a sellers market with total absence of an element of competition and the prices of deposits accepted is determined by the banks, but by an external agency like the RBI and the GOI. In a sheltered environment like this, the need for professionalisation of bank management was never felt personnel happened to be managed by a non-expert and usually by a medicore officer who could not otherwise prosper on banking operations. With the implementation of recommendations of Pillai Committee a controversy was ranging among bankers whether or not Personnel Management is a specialized function. In the absence of scientific personnel practices being developed in the banking industry, a discontent workforce emerged which strengthened the trade union movement in banking industry. 1.1 HRM in Banks

Is active recruitment of health workers really not guilty of enabling harm or facilitating wrongdoing?

Hidalgo1 argues that, contrary to widespread belief, active recruitment of health workers ‘generally refrains from enabling harm or facilitating wrongdoing’. In this commentary, I argue that the case is not...

Working Toward the Common Table: The Policy and Program Implications of Vermont's Unified Approach to Social Justice, Food Insecurity, and Local Food

Hunger and food insecurity are growing concerns in the United States and around the world. Recently, the US Department of Agriculture released a report indicating that 13.6% of Vermonters are food insecure (up from 9.6% in 2004–2006) and 6.2% are hungry (termed very low food security). At the same time, there is significant financial risk associated with food production and the challenges that Vermont farmers face in achieving business viability. Unconnected strategies that either enhance food access or build economic success for agriculture may work at each other's expense. Hence, there is a growing need for efforts that simultaneously support access to high-quality, local food for low-income Vermonters while ensuring fair return to Vermont farmers.

Cultural Influence in the Practice of Corporate Governance in Emerging Markets

Corporate governance seeks to ensure a fair return on the investment and it also establishes incentives and procedures that meet the interests of shareholders while respecting other stakeholders’ interests in the organization. Corporate governance has become one of the hottest topics of discussion in the circle of regulators, practitioners and academic in the aftermath of recent financial crisis. The financial crisis pint points the lack of corporate governance practice and that many institutions have taken heed to ensure compliance of corporate governance to win back the confidence of investors and regulators. Well-developed theories like agency theory, stewardship theory, hegemony theory and transaction cost theory could be used to understand the concept of corporate governance. The aims of this research are to anlayse the concept of corporate governance and see the level of adherence to corporate governance in emerging economies. The research also endeavors to link the cultural influence in the adoption of corporate governance. As there are only limited researches so far on the corporate governance and related issues in emerging markets, this research would contribute to the existing knowledge by filling the gap on corporate governance in emerging markets.

Industry disputes administration report on oil and gas leasing

Despite the Obama administration's efforts to make millions of acres of public lands available for oil and gas development, most of the acreage onshore and offshore of the contiguous United States remains idle, according to “Oil and gas lease utilization, onshore and offshore,” a 15 May report issued by the Department of the Interior (DOI). The report, which is being disputed by industry representatives, notes that 72% of the nearly 36 million leased offshore acres currently are inactive and that 50.6% of onshore leased acres (about 20.8 million acres) also are idle. “As part of the Obama administration's all‐of‐ the‐above energy strategy, we continue to make millions of acres of public lands available for safe and responsible domestic energy production on public lands and in federal waters,” said DOI secretary Ken Salazar. “These lands and waters belong to the American people, and they expect those energy supplies to be developed in a timely and responsible manner and with a fair return to taxpayers. We will continue to encourage companies to diligently bring production online quickly and safely on public lands already under lease.”

민간투자사업 수요위험 분담 방식에 관한 연구

민간투자사업의 핵심 성공요인은 민간사업자와 정부 간의 적절한 위험 분담과 민간사업자가 부담하는 위험 대비 적절한 수익의 제공이다. 현재 국내 민간투자사업은 민간사업자가 대부분의 위험을 부담하는 수익형 민자사업(BTO)과 정부가 대부분의 위험을 부담하는 임대형 민자사업(BTL)로 구분되어 있을 뿐, 정부와 민간사업자가 위험을 다양한 형태로 분담하는 방식은 아직 도입되어 있지 않은 상태이다. 이 결과 도로, 항만 등 수익형 민간투자사업 방식으로 진행되는 사업에 대한 과다한 위험부담으로 인해 민간사업자의 수익형 민간투자사업에의 참여가 극도로 저조한 상황이다. 본 연구에서는 민간투자사업 위험 중 가장 큰 위험인 수요위험(demand risk)을 정부와 민간사업자가 분담하는 새로운 방식의 민간투자사업을 살펴보고자 한다. 보다 구체적으로 본 연구에서는 민간투자사업의 운영수입을 모두 정부에 귀속시킨 후 운영수입 수준에 따라 민간사업자에게 계단형으로 지급되는 방식을 살펴보고자 한다. 민간사업자가 부담하는 위험 대비 적절한 수준의 정부지급금을 실물옵션 모형 및 위험중립적(risk neutral) 방법론을 통해 산출하고, 산출된 구간별 정부지급금에 반영된 사업수익률을 추정하고자 한다. 본 연구에서 사용한 방법론 및 결과는 향후 국내에 다양한 방식의 민간투자사업이 도입되는데 도움을 줄 수 있을 뿐만 아니라, 민간이 제시하는 다양한 방식에 대한 평가 기준을 설정하는데 도움을 줄 수 있을 것으로 기대된다. One of key success factors in PPI(Public Private Investment) is the structure of risk sharing between the public and the private, and the determination mechanism of fair return to private participants relative to the risk that private participants undertake. In Korea, two basic types of PPI exist. One is BTO and the other is BTL. In BTO, most risks are taken by the private whereas the opposite is the case in BTL. No intermediate form exists. As a result, BTO type projects had difficulty in attracting private participants because of the excessive risks. In this study, one intermediate form is studied where demand risk is shared between the public and the private. In the setting where the public authority takes all the project revenues and then pays ladder type payments to private participants depending upon the level of project revenues, appropriate level of fixed payments is endogenously derived using the real option pricing model. From the fixed payments, expected investment returns are calculated based upon a certain distributional assumption. The results of this study is expected to help introducing diverse forms of PPI in Korea.